“Don’t read any science fiction/fantasy from before [or after] 1980” is a phrase characterizing a notable split in sci-fi and fantasy fandom. There's a split for sure, but they're not nearly as incompatible as that quote might imply.
Vicarious vs. Role
For the purpose of this discussion, I define vicarious as “experienced in the imagination through the feelings or actions of another person,” in this case, the player’s character(s). (See my article “The Vicarious Participator,” in Dragon magazine #74) As I said in that article, a vicarious approach to role-playing puts the player...The opposite of vicarious participation is playing a role, as an actor would. In other words, the character is NOT you any more than Chris Evans was Captain America or Meryl Streep was Margaret Thatcher. This is immersive role-playing, and it is as much taking on a role as it is a shift in mindset where you are not “you” but “in someone else’s shoes.”
A Fictional Trend?
In my opinion, vicarious participation is now less common in fiction, as the reader is more often deeply immersed in the character’s viewpoint. Not just the “fun parts,” but all the mundanity of day-to-day life that a “real person” would engage with, even if they’re not particularly exciting. There are a lot of reasons for this that go beyond simply preference.Fiction that focused on adventures tended to be short, with novels much smaller before the 80s than they are today. There’s a reason for this beyond simply preference. In earlier times there were more standalone novels, fewer series, many fewer designed trilogies (which amount to extended single novels). Older novels were often serialized first in monthly science fiction magazines of the pulp days such as “Planet Stories,” “Astounding,” and “Amazing Stories.” Pulps were the successors to the penny dreadfuls, dime novels, and short-fiction magazines of the 19th century.” Virtually all gone now.
To be clear, there are contemporary science fiction and fantasy novels that are primarily adventure; but a great many more (going along with the trend in novels generally) aren’t so much adventures as “existence,” filled with details of life, often at considerable length. More realistic? Perhaps. But as someone who favors adventure, I find this kind of work largely tedious. (If there aren’t any swords, explosions, or magic spells in a movie, I’m unlikely to watch it. Not much different for novels.)
The Witch World series is an example of what I consider to be vicarious adventures. Yes, there’s a kind of love story, or even two, but almost all of it is Adventure with a capital "A". The books are short and to the point, well under the average novel length of 90,000-100,000 words. (50,000 is commonly regarded as the minimum novel length.)
All that said, as much as the quote about the 1980s being a turning point may ring true, there is precedent for both approaches in fiction. Well before the 80s, some people stopped reading The Lord of the Rings because the first book started slowly, perhaps because there’s not much adventure at the beginning.
Vicarious Heroism vs. Immersion
This approach – focusing on immersive role-play vs. focusing on vicarious adventuring – has serious implications for how a role-playing game plays out at the table.Immersive games rely much more on backstory development; characters come into campaigns fully formed, with a rich tapestry for a game master to draw on for narrative conflict. The more characters with these sorts of backstories, the more complicated these threads become. There is, pointedly, a “what my character would do” approach to this, where players can separate (or the GM can forcibly do so) what a player would do vs. what a character would do, depending on how events play out. It’s a fairly strong divide between the player controlling their character and the character living in the world, which tends to dig into the minutiae that we find more common in world-building novels.
Conversely, vicarious heroism tends to be focused on the adventure. Not surprisingly, like the pulps of old, these games tend to be one-shots or short-on-time games where heroes (or villains!) want to blow stuff up and “get to the good stuff.” There isn’t nearly as much dialogue about what a character would do as there is about the player deciding their character's actions (with little regard as to what their character “might think”), and then dealing with the consequences.
Both of these styles of play can be very entertaining, but they aren’t always compatible. The player who has a character deeply bonded to their mount may worry about leaving it behind, while the player who just wants to kill stuff ties it to a pole outside the dungeon and hopes for the best. In an ideal game, the game master has a discussion with the players to determine which style will work for the table and adjusts accordingly. But more likely, players don’t even know what style they like until they’re playing, and most tables end up with a mix of both.
Generally speaking, external constraints like time, player attendance, and the game master’s preferences will all determine just how immersive or vicarious players can be. My guess is that the longer a campaign is, the more likely it will lean toward story rather than toward action adventure, just because there’s more time and cognitive room to explore the fictional world. But there can be many, many exceptions in the full spectra of what the GM wants to play, what the players want to play, and how they play together. The key is figuring out what works for your group.
Your turn: Does your group consist of players who prefer vicarious adventure, deep immersion, or somewhere in-between?
